Auckland Amusements

I had no idea this was in New Zealand.

We haven't even been in New Zealand for one week yet, but we feel like a lot has happened in that amount of time. Our days consist mostly of sightseeing around Auckland, finding food and keeping Rachel hidden from her new (and a little too old) admirer that lives down the hallway in our hostel. Of the twenty something guests staying here at the moment, 90% of them are middle-aged bachelors from various countries, all of whom consider themselves to be more than "eligible." As of yet, we haven't taken them up on any offers so no need to worry (moms, dads, etc).

Outside of the hostel, we have had many great adventures. The other day we walked to the Auckland War Memorial Museum and looked through some of the exhibits there. Besides the war exhibits, there were the Māori Culture and Volcano exhibits that were pretty interesting. The Māori people are the native people of New Zealand and about every 1 in 7 people here are of Māori ethnicity. We spent quite a bit of time looking through those exhibits, learning more about New Zealand's history and contemporary culture. The Volcano exhibit was awesome, and focused a lot on the volcanoes/volcanic activity that surrounds Auckland City. Rangitoto is the most recently active volcano, it erupted just about 600 years ago. Not expected to erupt again for another several thousand years, so that's good. Really good, considering we just hiked to its summit today. Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend much time in the actual war memorial exhibits of the museum, because it was closing by the time we made it to them. Some other time perhaps.

Auckland War Memorial Museum.

Only in New Zealand would a cow skeleton constitute a Museum exhibit.

Maori Masks.

Duh.

Today we took a ferry over to Rangitoto Island (as previously mentioned) and hiked to the summit of the volcano. It had a great view of Auckland city, and we had a lot of fun hiking and chatting with a British girl who is also travelling on holiday.

Devonport Island.

Hiking to Rangitoto Summit. Photo courtesy Rachel.

At least it's not certain.

At the summit.

Auckland City from Rangitoto.

Artistic.

Capture the dream!

We also finally have a mobile phone here, complete with a New Zealand number. At last, we can contact people locally. It's also free (for us) to receive calls from the States, so if you want our number, ask and you shall receive. This phone thing has helped in planning and organizing the next phase of our journey. More to come on that soon. Thanks for reading and if you have comments, don't be shy!

A poster of the Auckland Rugby team signed by a bunch of its players.
We didn't actually meet them ourselves, but still cool. Given to us by the
hostel manager Wendy, because she likes us so much.